Recently, I co-presented a CLE webinar on "Technology for Better Mediation" along with two San Francisco trial attorneys, Miles Cooper of Rouda Feder Tietjen & McGuinn, and Jeff Smith of Abramson Smith Waldsmith. This post...more

On Monday, the California Supreme Court issued a thoughtful opinion that finally provides strong guidance on the use of animations in trial, affirming their proper place in supporting expert testimony. The decision People v....more

Most people don’t find data beautiful, but it really can be. I am definitely not talking about endless pages of numbers, but rather about data that is visualized in an appealing manner, which actually can be an exciting and...more

At the American Society of Trial Consultants annual conference in New Orleans last week, I had the opportunity to be on a panel discussion about social media and blogging for the legal profession. There, I saw one of the...more

More often than not, litigating a case boils down to persuasively explaining your theory of what happened. The best way often is to create a 3D animation. Nothing is more powerful to enhance the visualization and...more

Generally speaking, there are two ways to prevail at trial: (1) have better evidence and demonstratives than your opponent, and (2) keep your opponent’s evidence out. This article describes a couple of Cogent Legal's recent...more

Having myself been a partner at a small five-attorney plaintiff firm for years, I certainly know the feeling of going against the big firms on cases that can attempt to overwhelm you with discovery, but that often have more...more

This post spotlights three informational graphics that Cogent Legal created and describes how we wrestled with a mountain of data to present a large amount of information in a way that is instantaneously understandable and...more

Many trial or ADR PowerPoint presentations could benefit from recapturing the craft of the “Show & Tell.” Too often, what we should be “telling” we put on the screen. And sometimes, what we should be “showing” we ignore all...more

I always want to support attorneys using demonstrative evidence and trying new things in terms of design and tech. Demonstrative evidence is pretty much any evidence other than testimony that is presented during the course of...more

Unlike a case of a broken bone that might easily be seen on an X-ray, traumatic brain injury (TBI) cases are often much more difficult to diagnose and ultimately present to a jury. Having worked on many of these types of...more

Unlike a case of a broken bone that might easily be seen on an X-ray, traumatic brain injury (TBI) cases are often much more difficult to diagnose and ultimately present to a jury. Having worked on many of these types of...more

This post will provide a few key tips on how to transform economic data into engaging, easy-to-understand visual presentations. One of the most difficult parts of presenting any case involves economics, especially when it...more

Last week, the American Board of Trial Advocates (ABOTA) put on a full one-day mock trial in San Francisco in front of a large gathering of attorneys to show how the masters of trial do their trade. The mock trial turned out...more

How much information is “overload” for a juror or mediator? Psychological studies and neuroscience show that we possess inherited built-in limitations to our working memory—a so-called mental bandwidth. As an attorney, you...more

The benefit of the ongoing digital revolution in litigation is that so much more is possible than ever before for the creation and presentation of graphics for cases. But for every step forward with better technology and more...more

Attorneys sometimes act in trial or mediation as if they’re little more than an evidence machine collecting all the right evidence, excluding all the improper evidence, applying the law and expecting a positive outcome. That...more

The Expedited Jury Trial Act (Act; Code of Civil Procedure §§ 630.01 – 630.10, AB 2284), which went into effect in California on January 1, allows cases to be tried in a single day. It’s really the first major overhaul of how...more

It was the opening subject of the IBA's Managing Complex Litigation conference, held recently in Washington DC, where counsel from companies including GE, 3M and Ernst & Young exchanged notes on how they choose external...more

This article reviews the social sciences research on religion and discusses how attorneys can use this information in voir dire and case presentation. Three experienced ASTC-member trial consultants weigh in and the authors...more